My CMO Video Advertisement
By Guest Blogger Kevin Douglas West
After six months into my job transition, I started to realize a few things…
1. It’s tough to transition from one industry to another as a CMO. Companies are flooded with talent right now and want to bring in someone that makes an impact on the first day, not someone that needs 6-12 months to learn the industry. After 18 years working in the energy industry, I wasn’t having much luck with the hiring managers at T-Mobile, Disney, Target, or Starbucks.
2. It’s a bit more likely to transfer from one competitor to another as a CMO in your industry. I re-focused my efforts and decided that I needed to do the same thing for my own brand that I’d been counseling companies and Presidents to do for years. Focus on a small niche and own it. So I retooled my resume, did a thorough segmentation on the competitors (and leaders), and began an extensive networking campaign in my industry.
3. The talent pool is flooded and I wasn’t standing out. Even after all my effort, I realized (again remembering what I’d been telling others about their company brands) that I needed to do something to stand out from a stack of hundreds of resumes that recruiters are seeing every day.
With those three issues driving my activity, I launched my own campaign to re-brand myself as “The brightest CMO in energy.” I put some life into my resume actually making fun of what everyone else does on their resumes. Mine starts like this (after my name of course)…
Strategic. Innovative. Results-Driven. You’ve heard all these buzzwords before. Consider hiring the one of the brightest CMOs today!
But that just wasn’t enough. I needed something bigger and something that I had never seen done before to get attention. So I developed a 90-second video resume highlighting my experience in the energy industry, using some of my marketing campaigns (primarily television), and showcasing myself as the answer to their current marketing dilemmas.
Luckily I am a writer and a part-time independent filmmaker so writing the script was easy and pulling together some of the footage from advertising campaigns wasn’t too hard…always stay in good graces with your agencies! I purchased some stock footage and photographs to help fill in and make the story complete. Since I didn’t have video footage of myself and that would have cost money to rent a studio, I opted to do the voice-over and insert my picture. This gave the spot a personal feeling but wasn’t overtly showcasing me in the spot – remember I’m a marketer, not a model!
Start to finish, the spot took about 3 weeks with lots of edits and changes. I ran early drafts by friends and colleagues seeking advice on how they were receiving it. They made excellent suggestions. Just like a focus group, I refined it each time I received feedback. Once I had the finished product, I loaded it on YouTube and then told “my world” about it. I announced it on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and sent over 200 emails inviting my network to help me get it out there.
The results have been really exciting. All combined, I probably announced it to over 700 people. I’ve received over 300 hits on YouTube, but more importantly in the last 6 weeks, I have had 20 plus interviews for positions at 8 different firms. 100% of these came through a recruiter who heard about me through a friend or colleague! I’m well into the “offer zone” and hope to be the Chief Marketing Officer of a growing and exciting firm soon. To watch my video resume entitled “Imagine”, you can see it via my website or go directly to YouTube and type in kevindouglaswest.
